Modern Art at the Modern Hotel Only one night!

Modern Art at the Modern Hotel

Only one night!

May 7, 2009 from 5:00 pm to 9:30 pm

(Free and open to the public)

BOISE, Idaho – On May 7, 2009, over 2,500 guests are expected to attend the Modern Art exhibit at the Modern Hotel. The event, which starts at 5:00 pm, will feature over 65 performing and visual artists from Idaho and the Northwest. The annual Modern Art event represents a creative approach to designing an artistic display. Both the venue (each artist displays their work in an individual hotel room, allowing guests to tour the hotel and enter 35 separate galleries) and the wide swath of artistic mediums (from photography to spoken word to painting to dance) make this event unique. Additionally, the hotel’s exterior will feature performances from local musicians and dancers.

Last year’s first annual Modern Art Event was a wildly successful event which has inspired more rooms, more creativity and more fun in 2009. Expanding the number of available rooms from 20 to 35, artists booked early and some have decided to collaborate. Take room 226, where Amy O’Brien and Kerry Tullis will transform the space into a studio setting, in which to stage award winning Idaho artist Kerry Moosman’s specific style of pottery building. In elevating his process to a set piece and performance that happens within the arc of the evening, they hope to illuminate this art forms natural intrinsic value as well as showcase this specific artist at work.

The amount of rooms utilized in this year’s Modern Art Event wasn’t enough to contain the talent and creativity of our arts community, so we’ve moved some artists onto balconies and into alternative spaces, including the Lunch Ladies in the brand new Modern Kitchen. E.J. Pettinger, the 2006 winner of the Alt Weekly Award for Cartoonists, will create a respite from your art travels, inviting you into his room for some Mild Abandon. Look to a balcony for photographer Jonathan Sadler, who will undoubtedly create a project as interactive and fun as his last year’s session which he has compiled into the book “In Bed”. Definitely keep your head up for a glimpse of visual artist Lisa Pisano’s installation which is based on Hayao Miyazaki’s animation in “My Neighbor Totoro” in the 2nd floor clearstory. And don’t miss poet Adrian Kien, who will move his office from his artist in residency program studio at 8th Street Marketplace to a cozy corner of the Modern, for spontaneous poetry on demand.

This is just a sampling of some of the incredible and exciting work happening at Modern Art 2009 at The Modern Hotel. “It’s thrilling for us to see so many hands and minds creating in one place.” Modern Hotel owner Elizabeth Tullis said. “We are happy to provide a venue for these talented artists to be seen.”

As Charles Gill, 2006 winner of the Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and Modern Art participant, said about last year’s Modern Art, “The only thing I didn’t like about the event is that I didn’t get to make it to all the rooms!”

Check out a sample of last year’s event on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/user/modernhotelidaho.